Year: 2018

June 26, 2018

The Philippine Daily Inquirer ran an article last Sunday, June 24, entitled: Duterte on God, Catholics and Adam’s apple. It contained excerpts on the various attacks that the President has viciously spoken against the Catholic Church and its hierarchy.

CFC-FFL is a Catholic community of the lay faithful. We take serious offense on these irresponsible and cuss languages by the highest authority of our government. There is a correlation between the language of a person and his core values and his concepts of life. As a community of missionary families, how should we respond to such an affront against our core values1?

1. Study the Pastoral Statement on “God is Love” by Archbishop Socrates B. Villegas, on this issue;
2. We need to have a passionate desire to set things right in the face of Evil. But in our desire to set things right, we must go about protecting the good of the Catholic community, the wider community of God’s people and even the good of the President, who in this case, inflicted the injury. Virtuous anger seeks the rehabilitation of evildoers; ( CCC 2302 )
3. It should lead us to reflect on the depth of our mission, to win souls for Christ;
4. We cannot just be cursing in the dark but purposefully seek the lost and lead them to Christ;
5. We must intensify our prayers. We must set fixed intercessory days of fasting and prayers for Our Mother Church, and our community;
6. Pass/blast copies of the Statement of Archbishop Soc Villegas, as attached on our social media accounts and spheres of influences, (places of work, parishioners, etc.) for their guidance;
7. Discuss the above in our households and send prophetic words to our Area Servants, who in turn will send it over to our Servant Council for its appropriate recommendation to our Servant General.

May God bless our Mother land!

Why did the Gentiles rage and the people entertain folly? The kings of the earth took their stand and the princes gathered together against the Lord and against his anointed. …. And now, Lord, take note of their threats, and enable your servants to speak your word with all boldness.

(Acts 4:25-26,29).

Atty. Florin Hilbay
July 3, 2018
Today’s Most Dangerous Event.

1.  The steps towards constitutional dictatorship in 2018.

2.   This “Constitutional Committee” will vote in favor of its work. Once the members vote, the committee will then submit the draft constitution to the President.

3.   The President will endorse the draft to the Congress.

4.   The Congress will then convert itself into a Constituent Assembly. If Senate does not approve, the House will go its own way and let the Senate go to the Supreme Court.

5.   The Con-Ass will edit the draft to allow for Term Extension of the President and other public officials, and No Elections in 2019.

6.   The Con-Ass will immediately submit the draft for plebiscite. With the President’s control over LGUs, PNP, AFP, and other institutions, they can force the people to ratify.

7.   Or the President can declare nationwide martial law and have the new constitution “ratified” through Barangay or Citizen’s Assemblies, the way Marcos illegally changed the 1935 Constitution.

There. Marcos 2.0

(Please share and distribute. Inform the Filipino people.)

***

Committee approves draft federal charter

Con-Com ready to submit draft federal constitution to Duterte

Draft constitution ready before Duterte SONA

‘I suggest to you three aspects that may help you in your activity and in your witness: the courage of the truth, attention to all, especially to the most distant, and the ability to fascinate and to communicate’

Photo credit: Vatican Media

JULY 02, 2018 00:12 ZENIT STAFF PAPAL TEXTS

Pope Francis received the participants in the meeting organized by the Families of the Precious Blood on June 30, 2018, in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall. Here is the Vatican-provided text of his address to the some 3,000 present:

Dear brothers and sisters,

On the eve of the month of July, in which Christian piety turns in a special way to the Blood of Christ, I am glad to meet with the Societies of Apostolic Life and the male and female religious Institutes, with their respective lay aggregations, who are inspired by the spirituality of the Blood of Jesus. I greet you all with affection and I thank Fr. Terenzio Pastore and Sister Nicla Spezzati for the words with which they introduced this meeting, sponsored by the Sanguis Christi Union.

Since the beginnings of Christianity, the mystery of the Blood of Christ has fascinated many people. Your founding Saints too cultivated this devotion, placing it at the basis of your Constitutions, because they understood in the light of faith that the Blood of Christ is the source of salvation for the world. God chose the sign of blood, because no other sign is so eloquent to express the supreme love of life given for others. This donation is repeated in every Eucharistic celebration, in which alongside the Body of Christ, His precious blood is made present; the Blood of the new and eternal Covenant, shed for all for the redemption of sins (cf. Mt 26: 26).

The meditation of Christ’s sacrifice leads us to perform works of mercy, giving our life for God and for our brothers, without sparing. Meditation of the mystery of the Blood of Christ shed on the Cross for our redemption drives us, in particular, towards those who could be cured from their moral and physical sufferings, and who instead are left to languish on the margins of a society of consumption and indifference. It is from this perspective that your service to the Church and to society becomes evident in all its importance. For my part, I suggest to you three aspects that may help you in your activity and in your witness: the courage of the truth, attention to all, especially to the most distant, and the ability to fascinate and to communicate.

The courage of the truth. It is important to be brave people, build courageous communities that are not afraid to stand up to affirm the values of the Gospel and the truth about the world and man. It is a matter of speaking plainly and not turning away in the face of attacks on the value of human life from conception to its natural end, on the dignity of the human person; before social ills, and before the various forms of poverty. The witness of the disciples of Jesus is called to touch the lives of the parishes and neighbourhoods, not to leave indifferent but to affect, transforming people’s hearts and lives.

The second aspect is attention to all, especially to those who are distant. In your mission you are called to reach out to everyone, to make yourselves understand by all, to be “popular” by using a language through which everyone can understand the message of the Gospel. The recipients of the love and goodness of Jesus are all: neighbours, but above all those who are most distant. Therefore, we need to identify the most suitable ways of being able to bring together a multiplicity of people in homes, in social environments and on the street. To do this, you have before you the example of Jesus and of the disciples who walked the streets of Palestine announcing the Kingdom of God with the many signs of healing that confirmed the Word. Strive to be an image of a Church who walks the street, among the people, even running personal risks, sharing the joys and hardships of those you meet.

The third aspect that I suggest for your witness is the ability to fascinate and communicate. This is aimed especially at preaching and catechesis, the itineraries for a deeper understanding of the Word of God. It is a question of inspiring ever greater involvement in order to offer the contents of the Christian faith and to allow it to be savoured, encouraging new life in Christ. The Gospel and the Holy Spirit evoke words and gestures that enflame hearts and help them to open up to God and to others. For this ministry of the Word, we can draw inspiration from the attitude with which Jesus dialogued with people so as to reveal His mystery to all, to fascinate ordinary people with lofty and demanding teachings. The strength of this attitude is hidden in “the way Jesus looked at people, seeing beyond their weaknesses and failings: ‘Fear not little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom’ (Lk 12: 32 )” (Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 141). Imitating the style with which Jesus preached, He helps us to approach others by making them perceive God’s tenderness. I think we are living in a time in which it is necessary to bring about the revolution of tenderness.

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URGENT Statement
On The Celebration Of International Plastic Bag Free Day

The 3^rd of July is International Plastic Bag Free Day. On this occasion, let us heed the call of the great and inspirational leader of the Catholic Church, His Holiness Pope Francis, in his encyclical letter Laudato Si. In this encyclical letter, he strongly calls all people of goodwill for ecological conversion and bold cultural revolution.

In Laudato Si, article 21, we hear the Pope saying, “The earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth. Looking at plastic bags alone…it is recorded that everyday millions of plastic bags get disposed of. We see them here…there…everywhere! This problem, according to the Pope is closely linked to our throwaway culture. (LS 22) People, and maybe some of us included, just throw everything that for them is of no more use ‘away’ from their hands and their sights or away from their homes. If we all look deeply and consider Earth as our common home, there is really no such thing as ‘away’. What we consider ‘away’ is all inside our planet home. All the plastic bags that we get rid of our hands and our sights, always go to and remain in some other place which we call ‘away’ but in reality, is still inside our common home. Many of them go to our rivers, our seas, our ocean clogging and contaminating the very source of our life. And then we see them coming back to us with the floods. Worse, they also come back to us unseen in the food and the water that we take in daily.

“It is now believed that there are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic debris in the ocean. Of that mass, 269,000 tons float on the surface, while some four billion plastic microfibers per square kilometer litter the deep sea. This translates to about a million bags every minute across the globe, or 150 bags a year for every person on earth.” (http://oceancrusaders.org/plastic-crusades/plastic-statistics/)

These are also some of the other facts and figures recorded by the Ocean Crusaders:

• The number 1 man-made thing that sailors see in our ocean are plastic bags.
• There are believed to be 46,000 pieces of plastic in every square mile of ocean.
• World-wide, 13,000-15,000 pieces of plastic are dumped into the ocean every day which totals 6.4 million tons every year.
• It can take anything between 20-1000 years for a plastic bag to break up into smaller pieces. They don’t break down and those that do, break down into polymers and toxic chemicals.
• Because they take so long to disintegrate, a plastic bag can kill numerous animals. An animal that dies from the bag will decompose and the bag will be released, another animal could harmlessly fall victim and once again eat the same bag.
• At least two thirds of the world’s fish stocks are suffering from plastic ingestion.
• There are 100,000 marine creatures a year die from plastic entanglement and these are the ones found.
• Approximately 1 million sea birds also die from plastic.
• Scientists have identified 200 areas declared as ‘dead zones’ where no life organisms can now grow.
• Ocean acidification is a growing problem.

It is also being said that by the year 2050, there could be more plastic in the ocean than fish!

PLASTIC IS JUST HORRIFIC! And what we are doing to our common home is truly just horrible! We need to put an end to our mad throwaway culture and the degradation that it is causing to our common home and the death that it brings us and all creatures that live with us in this common home of ours! We need to honestly examine and ask ourselves, “How much of these plastics in the ocean come from me?” We need to challenge our ways of being and doing. As Pope Francis puts it in Laudato Si, “Today, in a word, the issue of environmental degradation challenges us to examine our lifestyle.” (LS 206)

As we commemorate this day, let us bring into our consciousness that in continually living in our present throwaway culture, we are all together destroying Earth, our common home, and killing one another and all our fellow Earthlings. We are all one in this. The things that each one of us do affect one another and all our fellow Earthlings. Let us collectively heed the call of Pope Francis for ecological conversion and bold cultural revolution – for a change of lifestyle; a lifestyle that is not destructive to any form of life but one that is life-giving for all.

~ by: Sr. Elizabeth (Bing) Carranza, SGM (Sisters of the Green Mountain) – Coordinator, URGENT Secretariat

From July 6 to 8, 2018, 6,000 youth delegates from around the world will converge and meet at the World Trade Center in Pasay City for the 11th Edition of the Genfest. The Genfest is being organized by the Youth for a United World, the youth members of the Focolare Movement. Since its inception in Italy in 1973, the Genfest has become an avenue for young people to show that a united world is possible. Genfest 2018 will be the first to be held in Asia and outside Europe.

With the theme Beyond All Borders, Genfest 2018 aims to allow young people to experience crossing cultures and traditions, find best practices, tools, and projects that would help them achieve sustainable change and realize that everyone is a member of one human family. The Genfest will begin with an Opening Program on July 6 and will be followed by a Cultural Night in the evening.

The Workshops and Forums at Genfest 2018: A Youth-Led Innovation

An innovation being introduced in the 11th edition of the Genfest is the WORKSHOPS AND FORUMS SEGMENT. On Day 2 of the Genfest on July 7, more than a hundred simultaneous workshops and forums on a wide variety of topics including politics, the media, economics, culture, sports, ecology and others will be held in De La Salle University and other venues. The topics for each workshop and forum were handpicked by the youth from the Philippines and other countries in a series of consultations on topics of interest they wished to learn and discuss. Subject Matter Experts were invited to lead the workshops and forums, which will have between 16 to 500 participants and will run from 9:00 am to 11:30 am on July 7. The main objective of the workshops and forums is to empower young people to think beyond themselves, to overcome borders, and to do acts of kindness and love when they go back to their communities.

Key insights and resolutions from the workshops and forums will be synthesized and presented to all the participants of the Genfest on Day 3 (July 8).

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July 3, 2018

Dear Friends,

Peace be with you!

In preparation for the President’s third State of the Nation Address, the Movement Against Tyranny would like to invite you to a forum titled “State of the Nation, State of Tyranny” this July 7, 2018, from 9:30am to 12nn at the Maryhill School of Theology, 64 14th St. cor. Gilmore Ave., New Manila, Q.C.

This will be a good opportunity for us to take stock of the national situation as well as identify the pressing issues that we need to respond to as the Duterte administration enters its third year.

We will have the following speakers for our forum:

Charter Change and Federalism
Former Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno (to be confirmed)

Amendments to the Human Security Act and Other Threats to Peace
Party List Rep. Antonio Tinio

Duterte’s China Deal
Atty. Florin Hilbay

The Economy for Real
Prof. Noel Leyco

We are expecting an audience of around 400 comprised of personalities and members of various organizations under the MAT network, including the media. Please feel free to invite your own network of friends and organizations.

For inquiries and confirmations, please contact Ms. Gel Marcelino at 09475891578 or at email stoptyrannyph@gmail.com.

Thank you very much.

In behalf of the Convenors,

Sr. Mary John Mananzan, OSB

Proposed open-cast pit in the Philippines would have resulted in environmental plunder, says bishop

Tribal people and environmental activists stage a protest outside the provincial capital of the southern Philippine province of South Cotabato to press for a stop to coal mining and other destructive projects in the region. (Photo by Bong Sarmiento)

Bong Sarmiento, South Cotabato, Philippines
July 2, 2018

Church leaders in the southern Philippine region of Mindanao have welcomed a decision by the South Cotabato provincial government to reject a proposed coal mine in the area.

It ruled on June 25 to reject the development of a 2,000-hectare coal mine in the village of Ned in the town of Lake Sebu.

Local officials said the mine went against the province’s Environment Code that bars open-pit mining.

Catholic missionary nun Susan Bolanio, executive director of the Hesed Foundation Inc. of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate congregation, lauded the decision as “a victory for the environment.”

“The spirit of God works through time,” said the nun, adding that the decision “will unburden our already overburdened Mother Earth.”

She said the decision would inspire local people to work toward “sustainable development and environmental protection.”

Bishop Emeritus Dinualdo Gutierrez of Marbel said the coal project would have brought about “serious man-induced dangers such as deforestation and siltation.”

“It would have been environmental plunder if mining had been allowed,” said the prelate.

Strong opposition from Catholic Church leaders and pro-environment groups also prompted a foreign partner of a local mining company to back out from the project.

The proposed mine site was supposed to be inside a watershed forest reserve near the ancestral lands of the T’boli and Manobo tribes.

In December, eight tribesmen opposed to the mining project were killed during what was supposed to be a military anti-insurgency operation in the area.

The military claimed that the tribesmen were members or supporters of communist rebels. Human right groups blasted the military report, describing the incident as a massacre.

The coalfield that straddles the provinces of South Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat is believed to contain 211 million metric tons of deposits.

Photo credit: Philstar

Statement of the Philippine Ecumenical Peace Platform

The Philippine Ecumenical Peace Platform (PEPP) is saddened by the latest development in the peace process. Prof. Jose Ma. Sison, Chief Political Consultant of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP) in a statement during a forum of peace advocates, said the NDFP should rather wait for the next administration to engage in formal peace talks than to continue the negotiations with President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration. This comes at the heels of the postponement of the scheduled fifth round formal talks between the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) and the NDFP on June 28-30. The government said that it would like to conduct consultations before returning to the negotiating table and later announced that it wants the talks to be held in the country.

Prof. Sison was frustrated over the repeated cancellations of formal talks and the many promises that the President had broken, including the amnesty and release of all political prisoners. He also stated that the NDFP would rather join other forces in ousting President Duterte. The latter downplayed the statement of Prof. Sison and said the war would continue. Prof. Sison later clarified that only the National Council of the NDFP can make the decision to suspend, cancel or terminate the peace negotiations and he can only give an advice to the said Council.

We pray that the exchange of verbal tirades between both parties would not result to a possible termination of the peace negotiations. Such termination would surely lead to the escalation of violence especially in the country side. The “stand down” ceasefire agreement and the interim peace agreement could have lessened the casualties in the armed conflict. Incidents like the bloody “misencounter” in Samar between the troops of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) could have been prevented. The AFP and PNP forces were reportedly responding to sightings of members of the New People’s Army in the area.

The PEPP continues to hope for the signing of an interim peace agreement that was supposed to be part of the agenda for the GRP-NDFP fifth round of formal talks. The agreement was expected to result to a coordinated unilateral ceasefire, general amnesty for NDFP-listed political prisoners, and agrarian reform and rural development as well as national industrialization and economic development agreements. Moreover, there are other agreements made in the previous rounds of talks that could have been historical building blocks for a just and enduring peace.

As church leaders inspired by the teachings of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, we still believe in the power of principled dialogue. We implore both parties to seek peace and pursue it (1 Peter 3:11) and open the doors to dialogue. We also appeal to the Royal Norwegian Government to continue helping the Filipino people in convincing the government and the NDFP to resume the formal peace talks. We call on the Filipino people to continue praying and working for peace in our land. The GRP-NDFP peace negotiations is not for the two parties alone but for all of us and future generations – “Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9).

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MANILA, Philippines—The Department of Justice (DOJ) has nullified the Bureau of Immigration’s (BI) Visa Forfeiture Order on the Missionary Visa of Australian nun Sister Patricia Fox.

In a ten-page order granting the Motion for Reconsideration to the Department of Justice filed by Fox’s counsel, Secretary of Justice Menardo Guevarra stated that the April 23 and May 17 Orders by the BI forfeiting Fox’s visa is declared “null and void for having been issued without legal basis”.

The Order stated that Visa Forfeiture is not in BI’s Omnibus Rules of Procedure 2015, and orders for the proper disposition of the case.

“We received the resolution on Sister Fox’s Motion for Reconsideration, and we submit to the directive from the DOJ on the disposition of her case,” said BI Spokesperson Dana Krizia Sandoval.

Sandoval bared that the Visa Forfeiture would have downgraded Sister Fox’s visa from a Missionary Visa to a Temporary Visitor’s Visa, and would require her to leave the country within thirty days. The DOJ, noted, however, that Visa Cancellation procedure would have the same effect and is the one written in BI’s Omnibus Rules.

“The DOJ saw that the proceedings initiated by the Bureau may fall under visa cancellation, and not visa forfeiture,” said Sandoval. “Cases of visa cancellation, according to Section 5 of the BI Omnibus Rules, may also be based on allegations of deportable offenses,” she added, referring to reports of Fox’s involvement in partisan political activities.

Sandoval mentioned that BI will be reinstating Fox’s visa and reactivating her ACR I-Card, and she is free to remain in the country and continue her missionary work pending the result of the deportation charge and/or visa cancellation case against her.

Fox is subject of a separate deportation charge for her alleged involvement in political activities.